The deadly coronavirus that is morphing into a global threat could have infected five to 10 times more people than Chinese officials have acknowledged, a group of U.S. researchers said.
The Feb. 18 study, which has not been peer-reviewed, was co-led by Lucia Dunn, economics professor at Ohio State University, and Mai He, pathology professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis.
Drawing from both official and unofficial data sources, the study suggested the cumulative infections and deaths could be “substantially higher” than officially stated—by a factor of 5 to 10.
“So many people are doubting the numbers in China … that we think we should look at alternative numbers,” Dunn said in an interview with The Epoch Times.
The data was pulled from official figures; a mobile mapping site from Chinese tech giant Tencent; and reported cremations at funeral homes in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.
Anomalous infection numbers appeared briefly on at least two separate occasions on Tencent News, an online news portal that provides real-time tracking of official outbreak data. On Jan. 27 and Feb. 1, the platform reported a cumulative infection (including both confirmed and suspected cases) of more than 213,000 and 233,000 each. In contrast, Wuhan authorities on Feb. 2 reported 14,380 confirmed infections and less than 20,000 suspected cases—only a tenth of the Tencent figure.
The numbers on Tencent were gone in a few hours, although not before Chinese netizens snapped screenshots and circulated them around the internet.
Rather than dismissing these figures as a technical glitch, Dunn said the Tencent data may be an unintentional “leak” that offers a clue at the outbreak’s true scale.
The Epoch Times and other media outlets interviewed staff at several major Wuhan crematoriums, who said they have been operating 24 hours per day since late January,